


Lye Kiss

by halobolts



Category: The LEGO Movie (2014)
Genre: (for fight club not for lego movie), Alternate Universe - Fight Club, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Masochism, Suicidal Thoughts, gratuitous stealing from the book, prose that might be a tribute to palahniuk but also might just be disjointed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 04:35:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20482961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halobolts/pseuds/halobolts
Summary: a fight club au, based off of the famous lye kiss scene.





	Lye Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! i'm back with a one-shot! i know, i know, second epilogue, but i watched fight club and this idea wouldn't leave me alone! inspired by a comic by @cartooncommubackup on tumblr!!
> 
> (god i hope this idea hasn't been overdone)

Fight Club is taking less of a toll on me than it should. 

“My coworkers must think I’m insane. Or abused,” I tell Rex one morning in the kitchen in our house on Paper Street. 

He’s in that ridiculous pink fuzzy bathrobe, and his mouth twitches as he waits for the coffee to drip down, an hourglass until our morning can start. “Your coworkers don’t actually care. None of them care about anything except themselves. You aren’t worth more than a passing thought, sandwiched between ‘ _ should I get a coffee’  _ and  _ ‘I wonder if Alice in accounting would put out.’” _

Anyway, nobody says anything. Not even when I show up to the construction site with a black eye and five finger-shaped bruises on either side of my throat. The on-site cop– the mean one, the one that people have started calling “Bad Cop”– gives me a raking glance, but says nothing. His good twin might have said something if he was on duty. 

Twin cops. Their parents must be so proud. 

_ I am Emmet’s growing disdain for authority.  _

Lucy’s over half of every week. She’s a washed-up singer with dyed hair. Her opinion of me swings back and forth so much that it might as well be a carnival ride. 

She and Rex fuck so loudly that I can’t focus on my book, so loudly that all the words turn into “ _ more, more, god-Rex-please.” _

In the morning she’s still loud, poking fun at me, grabbing my ass, calling me a dick. When she leaves a room, Rex enters, talking about how society is crumbling and how human sexuality is linked to consumerism. 

For as much as they love to fuck, they can’t stand each other in the morning. 

“The kinkier you are, the less society knows how to deal with you,” Rex says. 

_ I am Emmet’s confusion about who he’s jealous of.  _

Rex has big dreams. Dreams of burning the world down and starting over. These dreams always start with me and him and Fight Club in the basement, and end with me and him and the ruins of the world. 

Sometimes I tell him he’s crazy. He always laughs like he knows the punchline to a hidden joke. 

“Sure. I’m the crazy one.”

Sometimes I feel like I’d rather die than live in the world that Rex shows to me. When I tell him this, he tells me, “That’s the pussy way out.” 

And then he’ll say, “Come on, let’s go do Fight Club.”

Or, “Let’s go make soap.”

Or, “Let’s go fuck so hard we knock down plaster from the wall.”

_ I am Emmet’s tenuous grasp on his sexuality.  _

He’s in my bed when Lucy isn’t in his. I think that maybe Rex sees sex as an extension of fighting, something so animal it can’t be corrupted by society. 

“Karl Marx once said,” he drawls, smoking in bed after fucking me so hard I briefly go blind, “that consumerism disenfranchises humans from what makes them human. That’s why we only feel alive when we’re at our most animal. When we’re fucking and eating and sleeping and fighting, that’s when we’re alive.”

Again with the fucking Marx. 

“And what makes us human?” I ask, halfway hoping he’s up for a second round. 

“Making stuff,” he says. “That’s why we make soap.”

We’re making soap one afternoon when he says, “Don’t talk to Lucy about me.”

I shrug at the kitchen table while he stirs the pot on the stove. “Why would I?”

“Emmet, promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Promise me.”

“ _ I promise,”  _ I repeat. 

“Promise me!”

“I promise!” I exclaim.

“That’s three times you promised,” he says, and goes back to stirring. There’s tallow thickening in the fridge, glycerin rising to the top. 

Rex suddenly grabs my hand and traces my love line. “You can mix the glycerin back in when you make soap. Or you can skim the glycerin off.”

Life line now. “You can mix glycerin with nitric acid to make nitroglycerin.”

“Nitroglycerin,” I parrot back. 

“You can mix the nitroglycerin with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite. Blow up a bridge,” Rex says. He’s pulling me in closer now. “Or you could mix it with more nitric acid and paraffin to make gelatin explosives. Blow up a building, easy.” He doesn’t scare me anymore. I wonder if he ever scared me, or I just thought that I ought to be scared by him. 

“Why, with enough soap, you could blow up the whole world,” he says, hot against my neck, and then he’s pushing me away again. 

Rex has big plans. I just hope I’m included in them. 

“This,” and he picks up a can and shakes it, “is lye. It holds the whole thing together.”

He reaches out, catches my hand again. He wets his lips, like maybe he’s about to go down on me right here, right now. But instead he just kisses my hand like a real goddamn Prince Charming. 

I laugh. “What is this?”

“This is a chemical burn,” he says, and the can in his hand shakes lye onto the wet kiss mark. 

Fun fact: combined with water (or saliva), lye heats up to over 200 degrees. A paste of water and lye can burn through an aluminum pan. A solution of water and lye can dissolve a wooden spoon. 

I screw my eyes shut as I endure a pain stronger than a hundred cigarettes burns. 

“Come back to the pain,” says Rex. 

I’m far, far away. Rex slaps me. 

“The thing about Lucy,” he says fiercely, “is that at least she’s trying to hit bottom.”

“I’m hitting bottom,” I force out. 

“You can’t even imagine what bottom feels like.”

What I’m feeling is premature enlightenment.

“Focus on the pain.”

Guided meditation. Go to my cool place. The pain is happening far far away. 

He slaps me again. “This is the best moment of your life, and you’re off somewhere missing it!”

Don’t think of the words  _ burning  _ or  _ searing.  _

All I can think about is how I want to put a bullet in my head, but really, that’s nothing new.

I gasp, tears welling up. I desperately don’t want to cry in front of Rex. 

“Don’t cry,” he tells me. “Water makes it burn more.”

“Soap used to be made from burning bodies of heroes, when the fat and the ashes would melt together. Be a hero. Don’t cry.”

One hand still holding my burning hand in place, he uses the other to wipe my tears away. 

“God, he says, “you’re pretty when you’re in pain.”

Gee, isn’t that sweet.

_ I am Emmet’s growing masochism.  _

The chorus of screaming in my head turns into Lucy’s late night moans–  _ oh my god Rex please keep doing that a little lower a little harder Rex don’t tease _ – until I’m not sure whether it’s her pleading or my own. 

Either way, I’m sure he’s getting off. 

“Until you realize that you’re dying, you’re worthless,” Rex says, and I don’t know who he’s talking to. “Until you realize you’re dying, it can’t be you and me and the ruins of every IKEA ever under our feet.”

I don’t even know if he knows what he’s talking about. 

“Water will make it worse. Vinegar will neutralize the burning, but first you have to give up.”

God, my hand feels like it’s been up Satan’s own asshole. I’d chop it off if I had the means. 

“I give up,” I gasp. 

“Liar.”

“Please, Rex, I can't even think, I don’t know what you want me to–“ 

I’m crying again. 

He swoops down and kisses me. I’m all tongue and teeth and I can’t even reciprocate and he doesn’t care, pushes me back onto the table and knocks all the soapmaking shit off. 

He sticks his tongue down my throat and I feel vinegar pour onto my hand and sizzle. 

He lets me go and I catch my breath. The flesh of my hand is red and raw and puffy in the shape of Rex’s kiss, dotted with tear marks like cigarette burns. 

He runs his thumb over the burn. “Congratulations. You’re one step closer to hitting bottom.”

Overwhelmed, I pass out. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! i'm still @halobolts on tumblr and twitter, so contact me through there! i hope that this inspires people to make more fight club au stuff, or even to watch the movie- it's gay as hell. tag me in any art, and kudos and comments are always appreciated!


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